Mission Accomplished.

Yesterday was another day filled with snow/wind/cold. I had a very fulfilling day yesterday. I worked 7-12, then I surfed from 2-5, then I snowboarded from 8-11.

I say mission accomplished because at the start of the winter me and my buddy pat wanted to say we surfed and snowboarded in the same day. Now I didn't go to a mountain, but pat's backyard is close enough. We hit the jump and the jersey barrier again. I was much improved from the last time. That made up for my shitty surfing. I tested out my new/free 5/4/3 that I got, and guess what, It leaks. As soon as i paddled out the suit flooded with cold water and my legs were cold the whole time. After about a half hour my legs started cramping up hard. Riding waves was basically impossible at that point. Very frustrating because the waves were awesome. I saw some people getting huge barrels and throwing some sick turns. I knew I should have been doing the same but oh well, I'm not gonna make excuses. I sucked. At least my friend pat got a sick ride so it wasn't completely pointless. Changing in the snow was probably one of the most miserable experiences of surfing in the winter so far. I forgot my sweatpants at home, I was very cold.

All in all a good day.

Today I worked from 10-7. Now I'm sitting at home and relaxing drinking some Blue Moon.

Tomorrow I'm getting a new tattoo then going into the city for my parents' birthdays (mom 2/18 dad 3/2). Don't tell anyone I'm getting another tattoo though, I haven't told anyone, keep it shhhhhhh. It's a surprise.

Moist.

It's days like today that make me want to get on a plane to somewhere tropical.

Factors/Reasons for this desire:

1) its been snowing/raining all day in the city, and I'm soaking wet from my socks up to my head. the sidewalks are just one big brown slush-fest. When it snows in the city its nothing at all like the movies where everything is white and pretty.

2) its the heart of the winter. I forget what the warmth of the sun feels like on my skin. I'm sick of bundling up everywhere I go. I'm sick of wearing socks. I want to bronze my chest. (that was like 5 reasons bundled into one)

3) I was just looking at pictures from my uncle's wedding in mexico

4) I just sold a board bag to a guy going to panama on saturday.

5) I need to surf warm water waves

6) Someone else I know is going to Puerto Rico today.

7) Everyone is planning their spring breaks to go somewhere warm, and I'm not.

8) I hate the winter if I'm not snowboarding.

9) I want the days to be longer again

10) I can probably go on for a while like this, but I'll stop here.

You get the idea. I'm over winter.

Here are those mexico flicks I was checking out.

I need to get away.

Slacker.

I've been in crusie control mode again, and slacking.

Last Thursday was a nice break in the Cruise Control mode though. I went snowboarding at camelback because for some reason class was cancelled. It was me and my buddy John. Camelback is a really small mountain, but I made the best of it and had a good time. I spent part of the day helping my friend get better. I took him on his first black diamond, he was stoked, and so was I. I knew he could do it he just doubted himself. On the lift up I said follow me no matter what. He agreed and of course I took him down a black. He fell once or twice but made it down. He was grinning from ear to ear, I know that feeling, stoke.

View from the top:

After that we stuck to this one trail that had a mini terrain park at the end of it. It was just a few boxes and a big jump at the end. I was excited to put my newly learned skills to the test. I did much better than I expected. I was sticking the rails and even getting some "oohhhs" and "ahhhs" from the people behind me and the people going up the lift. Stoke. I was killing the jump (not really, but in my eyes I was considering I could barely do a 2 ft jump a week ago). I was getting some serious air. In all my years skateboarding I've never gotten airtime like that before. It's an awesome feeling just floating up there looking at the ground. I'm hooked. Stoke. My buddy John saw some of these airs and was itching to try it. He attempted to go off but he had zero speed and kind of just flopped over the jump. I gave him some pointers, just like I got a week earlier. I told him go much faster and just jump, don't think. On the last run of the day he did just that. I was behind him and I just saw him launch up and then he disappeared behind the jump. I thought for sure he ate it. Wrong, he stuck it. Stoked.

Overall that was a good day of snowboarding and we both left super happy. Thats what I mean by stoke. That's why I surf, snowboard, etc. It's an almost indescribable feeling of joy and excitement. I only get that kind of joy and excitement from few things in life, and I find that I just spend my days trying to chase that stoke. I guess you can call me and addict or a junkie. But at least I'm chasing "stoke" and not heroin or crystal meth. Its that feeling of gliding along a face of a wave, booking at down a mountain, carving up an asphalt hill, or launching into the air and floating. When you walk away from that stoke event you feel like your floating on joy for the rest of the day. It's so hard to describe, you've just got to try it.

Oh, but that stoke that we were riding on was completely deflated when we stopped at a five guys burger joint and shoved nasty hamburgers and french fries down our throats for about 12 bucks a piece. We felt so guilty. It's crazy how stupid little things can pop your stoke bubble.

Sorry for the mini hiatus. I'm back.

Oh, and I also realized I left a few stories hanging. I apologize to those of you who read this and have been thinking about these stories day and night, just waiting for me to divulge in the intricacies of certain events in my ever so significant life. HAH! Yeah right.

Anyway, JMU weekend, and Jetty near death stories are coming soon. probably tomorrow. I've got a full day of class and nothing but time. I leave my house at 9am and get home at 11pm, a 14 hour day for four hour and 15 minute classes. At least I'm not wasting my time or anything......(that was sarcasm, its hard to be sarcastic over the inter web)

Sorry for the delay Ace.

If you know the movie that quote is from you get some points in my book. Not that that would mean anything signifiant but hey, why not play along.

I've had an eventful couple of days. But it all seems like a blur and kind of difficult to remember. Thursday was fun as hell. I didn't go to class and I snowboarded in my friends backyard during the day, then again at night. I wanted to surf but that wasn't in the cards. It okay though I got my stoke on via snowboarding. I'm still new to snowboarding so this was my first day attempting jumps and grinding. We set up a legit jump and then we also built a jump up to a jersey barrier. It's kind of hard to explain. I planned on taking some pictures but I forgot to put my memory card in my camera, twice. But luckily I brought another camera that also takes videos. Too bad the battery was dead. Don't you love technology?

Anyway my friend Pat helped me out with learning some jumps, he gave me some pointers. By the end of the day I was doing pretty solid Indy's off the jump landing them clean. I almost stuck a 180. Not bad for my first time. Skateboarding for a few years back in middle school definitely helped out. Then we attempted some grinds. We started off with the barrier on it's side so I could ease into it. I got those pretty easily. Then we stood it upright and built a jump/gap to it. Apparently this is pretty difficult, especially it being my first time grinding at all. I didn't care and I was going for it. I was surprised at myself for charging like that, I'm usually a bitch and It takes me a while to attempt something like that. I didn't land any of them cleanly, but attempting them was a victory for me.

heres my buddy Pat sticking a Tail Press on said barrier.

I had a lot of fun, It made me miss skating. I used to skate all day at Pat's house. Me and Pat were little punk skaters all through middle school. We went our separate ways in High School, but for the past 2 years we've been playing music, surfing a bunch, and lately snowboarding. It was nice to get reconnected. We both want to get back into skating too, I just need some money for a board.

Heres Pat and I as little Grom skaters. (notice the difference in shorts height)

In the interest of time and space I won't tell you about my weekend, I'll save that for tomorrow. It's a good one.

No means of Transportation.

I don't have a car. There are waves. I can't get to the beach. Do you see the dilemma here?

I skipped school to go surfing today with my friend. Only to find out this morning he doesn't have a car today either. I've been staring at the webcam for the past hour going mad. I need to get back in the water it's been almost 2 months since I surfed good waves, and almost one month since I've even been in the water (shitty waves that day, I missed the good ones because I was at work all day).

This is what the webcam looks like right now:

Thats about chest high, perfect little barrels to tuck into.

Swells here on the east coast are here and gone sometimes in a matter of hours. It's not like the west coast where a swell and waves will linger for a week. These winter time nor'easters usually work like this: Wind blows up the coast, storm arrives, too windy and messy to surf, storm leaves, waves clean up, waves disappear with storm and go to Europe. That means as soon as the stormy part of the storm system leaves we have a 12-24 hour window to get the waves. After that the north northwest winds blow the storm out to sea, sending europe one of those week long lingering swells/waves. Make sense? I kind of simplified it, maybe too much. Us surfers are all mini-meteorologists.

Bottom line, the waves will be gone by the time I have a car, and then its going to be flat again. We've had 3 or 4 days these past months where there waves for a few hours. I missed all of them due to work and school. I had enough of that, so I skipped class to surf (I'll deal with those consequences for sure on tuesday, stress). That didn't work out to well. I'm very upset, but oh well. I probably sound like a whiney little bitch, but I don't care. Who in their right mind would bitch and moan about not being able to go dive into 35 degree water in 30 degree air temps with 20mph winds, and on top of that basically get naked in the snow while changing in and out of my wetsuit. I'll tell you who, me. If your a surfer you can understand where I'm coming from. If your not a surfer, I can't really explain it. All I can say is go surf, just don't surf where I am :).

Busy Busy Busy.

I haven't had time to relax lately. Surprisingly though, I don't mind too much. It is annoying because I have a lot of shit I need to do but I just keep putting it off because I don't have the time to do it. Were supposed to get snow on wednesday. Maybe we'll actually get some snow this time. Maybe I'll take advantage of that and do some shit. Hopefully class is cancelled on thursday, that'd be awesome. Even if it isn't cancelled I don't know how I'd get to class if the LIRR is down.

Full day of class, I'm going to call my uncle see if he wants to meet up for some dinner and a beer on my break. Tuesdays are boring.

Fail and Success.

I did not surf this morning. I woke up too hungover, it was way too cold to get out of my comfy bed, and the surfcam didn't look that good. I'm pretty mad at myself though. I usually never not go surfing (does that sentence make sense?). In my defense the two kids I planned on going surfing with bailed on me. As I previsouly said I hate surfing alone, especially in the winter. In fact I don't think I'll ever go surfing alone in the winter. In the spring/summer/fall for sure, but not the winter, its too harsh.

Anyway, here are some of the reasons why I didn't go surfing. Samuel Adams Winter Larger, Heineken Light, Bud Light, and Coors Light. Okay, those aren't the only reasons, I'm not an alcoholic. We went to the islanders game, fashionably late I might add, and I managed to talk down some scalpers from 90$ a ticket to 20$ a ticket. I'm very proud at myself because I never thought I could do something like that. Granted the alcohol helped a little bit, I'm not an alcoholic I swear. I just kept saying I'm not paying more than 20 dollars, I can go get tickets for 14$ with my student discount (which is true, but those were sold out, he didn't have to know that). We ended up getting 3 tickets at 20$ a piece, and these were the specialty seats with the replay screens in front and access to all you can eat and drink(dangerous). 180$ a ticket at we got them for 20 bucks. Great Success. Then we got 2 other tickets for free (80$ tickets that were closer, but didn't have the perks). These kind people tried to exchange 2 really good seats for 3 decent seats. They weren't allowed to so they just gave us the tickets. We threw them 20$ as a courtesy. All in all we got 3 180$ tickets for 20$ each and two 80$ tickets for 10$ each. I'm no mathematician but I'd say thats a pretty sweet deal.

heres the difference in seats. The first is the seat I got for 10 dollars. The second is the student discount seat for 14 dollars a few weeks back. be the judge of which is better.

Then after the game, in which the Islanders lost 1-3 on account of 2 goals for the islanders the refs didn't count (bullshit), we went back to a local bar in KP. There was a local band playing which actually turned out to be pretty good. Saw some friends, drank some beers, good times. On the way out I was talking to the lead singer of the band and he hooked me up with a free CD. Check out their music here.

Today I've got work 1:30-7 then I'm heading over to a friends house to watch the superbowl. Should be a good time, don't have any preference on who I want to win. I may slightly favor the Saints just because I love a good underdog/cinderella story.

Hockey.

I woke up at 7:15 and was at work by 7:30, pretty impressive. Got out at 3. Showered and drank 2 beers. No I'm not an alcoholic but a Samuel Adams Winter Larger is absolutely amazing in a hot shower, especially after work. If you haven't tried it, you must.

As I kind of expected my weekend plans didn't come to fruition. I planned on snowboarding tonight and surfing in the morning tomorrow. I got out of work too late, and it didn't even snow here on Long Island like it was supposed to. So snowboarding night session didn't happen. Plus its 50 bucks from 3-9 at mountain creek; no offense mountain creek, but your mountain isn't that good. The surf forecast has already changed a bunch since a few days ago. It was supposed to be good all day tomorrow and into monday. Now its supposed to be fairly good tomorrow morning only. I'm not too upset by it, because I planned on surfing sunday morning anyway. I hope its good and I hope I'm not too hungover to actually surf tomorrow. $8.50 beers is a pretty good hangover prevention tactic, thank you Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

As you may have guessed (if your from the New York area, or an Islanders fan) I'm headed to the Islanders game. Hopefully they don't get spanked like they did at the last game I went to.

Photo(s) of the day (2 weeks back after surfing):

Follow the Fish

If you don't, then you should. Paul Fisher is an australian surfer/partier/DJ/streaker. He gets paid to be hysterical. Click here to follow the fish, and laugh a lot.

Heres a little taste of fish and one of the Bra Boys Koby Abberton. Check out the documentary Bra Boys narrated by Russel Crowe to learn some more about Koby Abberton. This is one hard ass dude, seeing him like this is awesome.

Be warned, those aussies like to say some dirty words.

KobyFive from Paul Fisher on Vimeo.

This is a good night out in Bali with me and Koby going mad. I bet Koby $100 that he couldn't kiss 5 chicks in one hour. This is probably my favorite clip of this year. Hope you enjoy.

Bored.

Insomnia has set in. These pics are from about 2 months back when I first got my DSLR. Figured I'd throw them up there. This is the first time I used this camera. Me and my buddy Brian (karmapaymentplan) just went out for some longboarding, pretty warm out for December. Good times.

Music.

Lately I’ve been listening to all different sorts of music. I’ve always been into music and I have a shitload on my computer, but it’s all the same type of music. Basically its G. Love, Sublime, and blink 182 and all bands that are similar to them. Yeah, sure I have some grateful dead and other older music sprinkled in, but for the most part just those 3 bands and bands who are similar. However, as of late I’ve been going off the deep end and listening to some new shit (new for me at least). I even downloaded a country CD (probably the first and last). Zac Brown band, they’re country, but not your typical country. I saw them live on the Tonight show (formerly the tonight show) with Conan O’brien.

Here, peep this videbro (mispelt on purpose).

Other bands I’ve been checking out are MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, The Sea and Cake, Phoenix, etc. By no means have I discovered these bands, but I never would’ve listened to them before. I have to give credit to this musical awakening to my friend Brian (www.thekarmaypaymentplan.blogspot.com). I also have done the same to him for a few bands. He fought me on G. Love forever, but then we went to an amazing G. Love John Butler Trio show a few summers ago and it was amazing. He was all about baby got sauce and cold beverages. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is people need to be more open and willing to try everything (except heroin). Not just with music with everything. I have another friend who just listens to grunge music. He won’t even listen to anything else. To him, its grunge music or nothing else. That’s his mentality with everything too. It’s his way or no way, he’s always right; and gets mad at you if you try and help him and show him a different/better way. I’m talking everything from a faster route to a movie theatre, to how to make onion dip, or a different way of working out. You can’t even try and help because he’ll get mad at you. It’s very fustrating cause I love the kid, but oh well, what can you do.

I’m not saying that I’m this perfectly open and tolerant person, because by no means is that the case. However this is something I’ve realized I need to get better at, and I have. I’d like to thank my ex girlfriend for bringing that to my attention. Just because you were brought up that way, doesn’t mean that is THE only way or the right way. Your opinion isn’t always right, try to not be stubborn and look at things through someone else’s shoes. I guess that’s one good thing I got out of that relationship, oh yeah and a sweet Nixon watch. No, I’m just kidding, well not really I did get the watch, but that’s terrible. I got an IPod too J. (good thing she’ll probably never read this). I think if we all did that, we’d be a little better off. I always do that, or tell my friends to do that when they’re being a dick or an asshole to someone. Like ditching a friend or playing a prank or some shit like that. I make them think and I say “how’d you feel if that was you all alone getting laughed at.” Sometimes I see them realize “oh shit your right” and sometimes they just laugh and continue doing what they’re doing. Oh well, what can you do.

Well I’m done being a Philasoraptor (like the dinosaur, but not). I have a full day of class ahead of me and I was just thinking about this on the train commute and felt like sharing.

Green Is Good.

Green is good, especially when I'm looking at swellinfo.com. Green means favorable winds and clean waves. A lot of green = A lot of good. Heres what I'm talking about.

So far this weekends looking pretty good. Finally something to look forward to. I'll thankfully be able to get some surf in the way my work schedule works out. I may even snowboard saturday night. I'm pretty stoked. Just have some work to do tonight for school, work 5:30 to 9, school all day tomorrow, then it's play time. I'm also excited to try out my new wetsuit. I hope its more flexible and I can actually move, maybe even actually surf while I'm out there.

Today I woke up, took care of some shit off the ol' to do list. Went to the gym. Now I'm gonna do some more to do list shit then go to work.

College.

College to me is just a big old waste of time. We spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time for a piece of paper that only means something in the job market. I don't even want to go into the job market but I "have to", thus I "have to" have a BA. Don't get me wrong, I love learning and knowledge, but thats not what college is these days. College is a series of required classes, "credit hours", "proficiency exams, and a whole list of other bureaucratic bull shit. College is pretty much a business and these schools try to do everything they can to keep you here. Hardly anything I've learned in college is useful. All my important life lessons I've learned through experience, mistakes, and learning about subjects of interest to me. If that movie acceptance was a reality, except not as drastic and extreme, college would be awesome. Just learn about what you want to learn about for four years then get a job. Fuck Lit 232, Math 105, Comm 104 and all those other bull shit classes. What the hell did we go to High School for if we're just going to do it all over again the first 2 - 3 years of college. I want to learn through traveling, trial and error, experiencing life, learning through people we know, and reading what I want to read. I don't want to come to a building all day sitting around for hours on end to hear professors try and relate popcorn kernels to the economy (yeah, that happened at 11am this morning...) Fuckin A. I better be done with this shit next year. But then it's on to the real world and a job. Is that going to be any better? Who knows

I've realized that all these posts have been very angry and negative. I apologize. I'm not some miserable I hate the world bastard. Just in a bit of a funk. Usually happens every year around this time, the winter gets to me. I'll try and cheer up.

Yeah, anyway. I spent all day in the city at class, doing nothing. I still have another class now, then an hour and 45 minute commute home. Good Times.

Snow tomorrow, enough to setup a snowboard jump/rail. Lets hope so, doubtful though.

Waves forecasted for Sunday and the following Monday. I better not be working. Waves then the super bowl would be an awesome Sunday.

My homebase:

Exhausted

I woke up around 10; needed to catch up on sleep. I ate breakfast and showered then worked all day at home depot. 12-9. I got home, ate and showered. Now I'm going to bed cause I have class 9am to 11pm tomorrow. Some life huh. Hopefully I'll do something productive during my breaks tommorow instead of checking facebook and twitter 10 times because I don't know what else to do. I hate that habbit, I need to break it.